Hi Kentstar: I'm glad to hear from you .... I like ALL of your posts through the past years in rose & other forums. You are always honest, informative, thus help others.

Blood meal doesn't go stale on me ... I have one bag that I used for the past 3 years. Used that this year, and it worked great. Organics need heat and water to break down. If it's too cold, or too dry, then it won't work. This summer it's colder & drier than normal.

I get better luck with organics when I soak in a bucket of water, and leave in hot sun for a few days ... be it banana peels for potassium, blood meal for nitrogen, or cracked corn at $2.99 for 10 lbs. bag from the feed store.

The cracked corn is already broken, so soaking it released nutrients ... I already burnt my powerful flour-grinder by grinding crack-corn, so I don't recommend grinding corn. Soaking is far easier, it's breaking down organics in a form that plants can use: as a liquid.

This post was edited by Strawberryhill on Mon, Jun 9, 14 at 13:21

Thanks Strawberryhill! I guess I can still use the bloodmeal bags then. I did buy some Neptune's Harvest Kelpmeal for the first time today and I'm going to try that this year on my roses and other plants. I have to make sure not to burn them by placing the kelpmeal too close to the plants though. It should work great though and I can't wait to try it. I finally have a couple of days off work tomorrow and Wednesday so I am going to be outside in my garden yippee! :)

Hi Kentstar: Neptune is a great company. Another company is: Alaska fish pellets for tomato ... also LIQUID Alaska Kelp plant food NPK 0.13-0-0.60, rich in trace elements, decent potassium at 0.60. See link below for many Alaska fish products.

I'm a firm believer in Kelp Meal for essential trace elements after my experiment yesterday. See picture below of a very yellowish sick tomato plant, taken at 10 am yesterday morning:

Here is a link that might be useful: Alaska fish products: liquid and pellets

Then I applied a 3-days-old soaking-solution of Alaska pellets for tomato with NPK 4-6-6, containing: fish bone meal, alfalfa meal, sulfate of potash, and kelp meal. I also dissolved 1/2 cup of soluble gypsum.

Gypsum is used to release calcium-hydroxide bind-up with nutrients in soil. Calcium-hydroxide is used in water-treatment, that chemical raise water-pH, plus unstable and binds with nutrients & trace elements, thus plants can't access, and turn yellowish.

Check out INSTANT green-up of the tomato in previous post, picture taken at 8:15 am this morning, after one day, and one night:

Here is a link that might be useful: Alaska fish products: liquid and pellets

This post was edited by Strawberryhill on Thu, Jun 12, 14 at 17:18

Recently I put 3 Jobe's organically fertilizer spikes for veggies into one of Heirloom tomato plant. It contained 2% nitrogen, 7% available phosphate and 4% soluble Potash, from 99cent store. Last year tried Kellogg's natural & organic fertilizer for vegetable, tomato, and herb, n-p-k: 4-6-3, good result. Appreciate your knowledgeable instruction. Good to share and help us all with your experiments before we attempt them, yeah! "you go girl"!

Wow! What a difference one day makes! Hope it does the same to my knockouts!